One of my favorite prototypes from the Macroscope Labs was a tool to organize all of the "activities" one engages in the workplace of the future. Play. Projects. Ideas. Prototypes. Work. Creative. The distinctions blur.

Macroscope Labs Playhouse~ producing the future, one play at a time ~

We tossed around the idea that Macroscope Labs would be a theatrical playhouse. In our mL playhouse, ideas and projects that we incubated would come to life similar to a play. Each play has a particular stage of development (from open mike to post production). Much like a summerstock playhouse, our role might vary on each play, from scriptwriter to actor to set designer to costumer to producer- depending upon what was needed to get the job done or to grow our learning edge. Each activity requires something different and invites an unique blend of creative collaborators.

Open Mike

Idea in incubation:

you talk about the idea to see whether it gains traction, whether you still like it after a few pitches, what responses you get. it may be an idea you want to hand off

Staged Reading

Idea in exploration:

you find someone else who wants to build with you and you want to see whether its viable. you delve in to explore what next

Off Off Broadway

Idea in pilot:

you decide to give it a quick prototype- rough and dirty. You want learning and feedback. Test to decide whether to investment more time and money

Main Stage

Full steam

you've got money in it and you want a tony. get the best cast/crew, rehearse and execute. everyday is a new day on the stage.

Post production

Wind down:

Close elegantly & move on. Review, learn, celebrate. This may mean the show goes on tour, hand off to new team or document conclusion. Alls well that ends well.

7 steps:

1. Inventory ALL of your projects - one idea/project per post it - sub-projects for one job = separate post-its - suggestion: color code by theme or by paid/unpaid

2. Organize the post-its according to the stage of development - follow the stages noted above, I sometimes include an off broadway (between off-off and main stage)

3. Notice where there is a high concentration of post-its - the distribution will help you see where you are spending time and energy - is this distribution congruent with your current needs or are you currently stressed - if self-employed on project work, do you have an appropriate distribution of paid idea/projects - if you have a lead role in more than 2-3 projects on the main stage, you might need a cardio stress test

4. Identify what is your role on the projects - is it your idea? are you rallying the team? are you a first follower? are you the broadcaster? - does the role play to your strengths? are you on your learning edge? - how does the team on this project feel for you?

5. Notice your roles - are they always the same? do you feel more energized in some than others? - are you building your craft/skills in each of the different roles? - who do you want to be your mentor for each role?

6. Identify all of your current collaborators (cast & crew) - put each by the respective project and identify their role on the project - are all of the roles that need to be filled to complete the project full? - is the team well aligned to deliver based on their skill strengths? - what skills do you need to complement your role/skills to get this project to fly? - where can you find people who are smarter than you are at this? do you know them already?

7. Fail often, early. Learn. Dive in or move ON! - what is the next action step? Put that onto whatever project software you use. i like wunderlist and asana* - identify an end point for each stage, so that you know... when to stop and assess? - check out my 5*5 method posts for a systematic approach to move from idea incubation to explore/pilot

Attract the Best Cast & Crew .... and enable excellence in their performance

Hire people who are smarter than you are

Communicate the vision

- on stage, that is a script & blocking,** what does your idea need?

Allow the vision to live in dialogue with the creative genius of the team

Trust the team to do their magic (you hired people who are smarter than you are)

IN ACTION: how it looks on the wall.

You can create your own paper version for your wall. A digital version,as below, is available for download as well. You can play with this digital version in powerpoint: import the .png, create text boxes for each of your projects, lasso/copy the people and group each person with a name and move it around until it works for you. If you have photoshop, it'll be even easier.

*these are two services that i have used and liked. i have no financial, professional or personal connection to either company. people are very particular about their project management software, enjoy whatever one works best for you to get things done!

** Ingmar Bergman and Creative Leadership by Bo Gyllenpalm, the most influential book I read in 2011. (apologies, I know that it is out of print and have asked Bo to consider republishing it as I find it more relevant than ever).

Dedicated to all those on the journey to be the change through creative lifestyle design, particularly the lovely Joep Kuijper, Seb Paquet on a 100 day journey into creative economy and Jean Russell, life explorer of creative engagement. May your project management always allow room for passionate play, creative inspiration and hacking!

Thought Contributors: Idea developed in collaboration with the enchanting creative Eddie Harran at a time when I was fascinated by Bo Gyllenpalm's book on the stage leadership of creative director, Ingmar Bergman: what better role model than someone who pulled career best performances from cast/crew night after night for years and imagine, he never returned to the theater after the curtain went up on opening night.). The creative innovator and the person who turned me onto the power of Mastermind ever-inspiring Do More Great Work guru Michael Bungay Stanier of Box of Crayons. Digital to wall/post-its thanks to the effervescent creative Loretta Rae.

Mash it up. Hack it. Please share your hacks!

Have you ever experienced the confusion or frustration of having someone else define your identity for you? Well, Global Culture Kids is a playground for you.

Visiona playground for global culture kids! a place to play, learn, celebrate, explore...a place to champion the awesome work by global culture kids!... and whatever else emerges...

It might unfold to look like a digital version of this...

Some ideas could be....Sandbox for community building sandcastles... Slides to champion projects by GCKs...Swings to see a gallery of GCK work and projects... Teeter-totter for tips...Picnic tables for parties ... ......

... what would you like to bring to life in the GCK playground?

The domain is bought... www.globalculturekids.org ... would be great to get a real graphic artist on the team early, right?! Who's on board to build a playground?

Attribution this idea is a lifetime in the making, with countless people along the way who touched, inspired, healed and shared the journey... special shout out to my grandpa, Peter Maker, Eduardo Gonzalez, E Nathaniel Gates, Rhonda Magee, Marnie Keator, Sheila McKibben, Megumi Nishikura and the Hafu Film Project team, Edward Harren, Daniela Franchi, the poc community, the Plum Village community & Clarissa/Reika & the Hapa-Hafu Kitchen Project crew.... special kudos to awesomeness amplifier and web designer Morgan Sully for the nudge to action on this initiative.

a snapshot...

Pilot/Prototype

1) What do I want to test? 2) What is the headline if it is a success?3) What is the best method for this pilot/prototype?4) Will the method lead to the headline identified? 5) What is the milestone/time frame to evaluate?

1) Brainstorm 5 successes & 5 failures2) What surprised me?3) What touched me?4) How is my understanding different?5) Based on this experience, what question will I ask myself next time?

Personal-Professional Development

1) What do I want to learn?2) What is my role? What part reflects a learning edge?3) Who are the smart people that I want to learn from/with? 4) How can I assess my learning? 5) Does this approach allow the learning I want?

1) Brainstorm 5 successes & 5 failures2) What surprised me?3) What touched me?4) How is my understanding different?5) Based on this experience, what question will I ask myself next time?

I like to "do," which generally takes an action learning form described previously, From Idea to Pilot. By the time I learn through a pilot, it grows into something, pivots or gets abandoned under the ethos of fail often, early. Whichever direction, I stop for reflective learning as described, From Pilot to Reflection, but rarely stop to write up what I learned because a new opportunity for learning already beckons.

If you have seen previous efforts to document learnings... something akin to tomes turned blah-blah posts, it may be clear why I resist the report stage. That said, I have experimented with an iterative design in hacking life and on the off chance, that might accelerate someone else's journey, it seems worthwhile. So this month, I challenge myself to a new report format. Simple. Short. Sweet. and whenever possible visual.

The "report" formula will be a 5<5*:

5 things that I wish someone had told me before I started. Reports completed in <5% of the time spent on the project.

Keep an eye out for the 5*5 icon to find pilot/prototype posts.

*Thanks to Ian Page for the idea for the 5<5 report format.

Do you have a format for reporting on pilots & prototypes? Please share!

A pilot design needs to match the project. Each project is unique. When prototyping ideas in small projects is that there is no common design structure to report what was tried, whether it worked, learnings from failures, how a next step was tinkered and final learnings. We do, observe, reflect, iterate, do... and it turns into something concrete or we move on.

Here is a 5x5 approach to move from idea to pilot/prototype:

5 Questions: Pilot/Prototype Development

1) What do I want to learn from the pilot/prototype?

2) What is the headline if it is a success?

3) What is the best method/approach to learn from this pilot/prototype? What is the smallest thing that I can do and test whether to pursue further, pivot or abandon? How will I gather information?

4) Will the method lead to the headline identified?

5) What is the milestone/time frame to quickly evaluate whether to pursue this idea further?

X

5 Questions: Personal-Professional Development

1) Why am I doing this? What do I want to learn?

2) What is my role? What part pushes my learning edge?

3) Who are the smart people that I want to learn from/with on this pilot?

This post is one in a series of 5<5 posts that document pilot/prototype projects with the format 5 things that I wish someone had told me before I started in <5% of the time spent on the project.

"I love beginnings; beginnings are full of possibility." - Elie Wiesel at World Forum on Facing Violence, 2008

Over the past few years, I started many blogs. Each had an unique focus, different purpose and varying communities.

Key learnings:

Blogs are like gardens; they require tending if you want them to flourish.

Generate short posts.

Post at consistent time intervals so that readers/visitors know what to expect. Here is a rough guide: daily or at least one post every 4-6 days (build following), 2 weeks (create community), once a month (stay connected) or once in awhile (personal).

Be on the channel of your desired audience. Share your blog post on Twitter/FB/G+ with an interest/location hashtags to reach new people. Requiring people to get out of their regular routine to engage decreases likelihood of engagement.

Engage others and build a community to coproduce a blog is ideal to keep content fresh, dynamic, diverse, frequent.

If you want people to see your blog, you need to help them find you. Include links to others blogs/people on your blog, share your posts on other channels (G+, FB, LinkedIn, etc) and make it easy for other people to share your posts.

Invite guest bloggers.

Link a post to G+ for comments can be an effective way to enable comments on your post while concurrently extending its reach. (HT @ZenMoments)

Keep the interface clean and simple. Turn off the noise, let the reader focus.

There are color schemes that make reading easier, use them.

Don't plan too much up front. Let it emerge. See how the traction goes with readers/public.

Discussion of sensitive topics may be challenging given the text nature of the blogosphere, where nuance can be lost.

Blog Technical Assessments:

Blogger was easy when there were no alternatives.

Squarespace features/tools were fantastic, but it is expensive per site. Provided sophisticated entry for novice. Not sure that tools/widgets are keeping up with the times and their customer service/support was dodgy considering how expensive it was/is.

WordPress, tried three times to use this platform and find it a fail for my own sites. However, I have participated on multiple projects that use WordPress effectively, and as a writer on those efforts, I have found it easy to use. Getting over the set up, design/plugin process and maintenance is key barrier to entry.

Weebly, use it to host both sites and blog and find it useful. I fear the day that I ever try to leave, since it is all drag/drop widgets, I am not sure how portable it is, but for now, it'll work.

Ning could have been great, but required people to be on it and if it's not already part of their work flow, it's not likely to gain traction and traffic.

Google Sites is OK for projects, not flexible for website portal and not 'sticky' for community engagement.

It seems that I have 23 draft posts in the queue and 15 ideas notes as yet to turn into posts. Most of the time, I prefer a chat so that the ideas stay dynamic and I learn from others what words resonate and how an idea might evolve. Written words feel clunky and sticky- a bit heavy. Perhaps, this is a chance to delve into the light, ephemeral way of words for the interwebs.

In addition, it has come to my attention that I could be better at documenting projects and sharing learnings from adventures. As an action oriented experience designer that doesn't necessarily come as easily as snapping a picture at the end of the day to say, "hey, look at what I made." These project accounts run high risk for getting boggy in details... what one thinks about to create an experience is often quite different from the experience created. Design challenge for effective blog presentation.

After a few failed blogs, I learned that blog writing is different. Writing for the web is its own genre. I'm a novice.

Simple.

Tight sentences.

One thought per post.

Preferably laced with a visual hook or bullet points.

Personal insights, observations, ideas more than dissertations and research.

For now, I will pick up where I left off in March and practice the art of blog posts. That means, it may not be pretty, but hopefully, as with most things that one practices, time will reflect improvement.